I know I’m not going to get much sympathy on this one, but I’ve been super stressed the last two weeks trying to find the right staffing fits for our household. If you remember back, I hired Davie (our Gardener) prior to getting here and he showed up for work the day after we arrived. He has been a Godsend and we are so grateful that we found him.
Last week I worked on finding a cook, which was the next most pressing position I needed to fill. I’m not the greatest cook as it is and the lack of familiar ingredients in third world countries makes it surprisingly difficult to get dinner on the table each night.
The trouble was, I’d found the perfect cook, a triple threat that could cook, clean and nanny a bit. I loved her personality and the letters of recommendation from her former employers were glowing. The thing I was stuck on was that in order to take the job she’d need to live on our property in the separate quarters with her 5 and 9 year old girls.
Here’s a reminder of what the quarters look like:
In Manila and Lima we also had household help, but they always went home at night and we appreciated having our space. It felt like a big stretch to go from never having anyone live with us to having and employee AND her family live on our property.
One of the biggest challenges with having help is managing boundary issues. While I’ve got experience handling household issues, we’ve never had to deal with the new boundary issues that arise when help lives with you. Things need to be agreed on in advance, like:
- Will her girls be allowed free access to the yard/swingset/sandbox, etc?
- Will they be allowed to invite people over to visit them at the quarters?
- Will the girls be allowed in the house?
- Will the girls be allowed to interrupt/visit their Mom when she’s working?
The list goes on and on.
Well, we decided to take the risk (largely due to a strong recommendation from her former employer) and welcomed Schorasticah (pronounced SchoLasticah) to our household last Friday. She’s been a great fit and Nia adores her already. She’s been very respectful and I feel optimistic that we’ll be able to work out any issues that arise when she and her girls move in at the end of the month.
This week my focus has been on finding a nanny, which has proved to be quite challenging. I had one hired right away, but her son got malaria and she needed to take care of him. She’s been unable to estimate when she’d be able to start work, so I decided to interview more people. The problem is, I’ve had lots of good candidates, but with each one there seems to be some overriding issue (doesn’t speak good English, needs the whole family to live in our quarters, etc).
I honestly don’t know what to do but I need to make a decision by Sunday. Uffda. And the Minnesota girl in me doesn’t like telling all these people that we didn’t pick them (especially knowing how desperately they all need the job).
And the fun doesn’t end there. Once everyone has been hired we do a 3 month trial period and assuming everything goes well, we then sign an employment contract. Each country has different employment standards. Most have a 13th month bonus (so that they can buy their family Xmas gifts). In Peru we had to pay into social security, which was different. Here, the new thing that’s expected is that you’ll give loans (usually up to 2 months salary advanced, paid back over 6 months) and pay for their entire family’s medical expenses. There can also be transportation allowances, food allowances, and school costs, among other things. It all depends on what gets agreed to in the contract. I can’t tell you how confusing this all is when arriving in a new country.
Don’t get me wrong, I love having help and providing good jobs, especially knowing that that one salary often supports an entire family (and then some). We can afford it and although the sum seems like a pittance to us by US standards, Americans generally pay on the high end and treat their people very well. It’s just all the decisions and conflicts that arise as a result of having help that cause me to lose sleep.
Would I give up having help? No way.
Would I like to have my household up and running? You betcha.
Hopefully I’ll be feeling some resolution by next week once I’ve hired a nanny and gotten her on-boarded. Fingers crossed that we get the right person!
